mmo subs and outright distortions

[Nadia]

Top 5 – Most Popular MMORPG’s (from 2009)
http://gamersyndrome.com/2009/pc/top-5- ... r-mmorpgs/

Yes, Lineage 2 is more popular than WoW. Lineage 2 is, in fact – my favorite MMO. The game is much more hardcore oriented and is one of the hardest MMORPG’s ever created.

The fact is that, from the 20 million players that play the game actively – only 40 have reached the final level – 85.

The game is released in Korea in 2003 and ported to America in 2004. The game is developed and published by NCSoft.

from ncsoft financial reports from Q4 2007
http://www.massively.com/2008/02/21/q4- ... financial/

Lineage
[Worldwide]: 1,049,763 subscriptions (down 93,936 from Q3)
[North America]: 6,414 subscriptions (down 585 from Q3)

Lineage 2
[Worldwide]: 926,570 subscriptions (down 4,693 from Q3)
[North America & Europe]: 79,986 subscriptions (up 943 from Q3)

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this top5 article is a year old but Ive seen this commentary often about how L2 has 10s of millions of players ----- and it does NOT

[Taxious]

The fact is that, from the 20 million players that play the game actively – only 40 have reached the final level – 85.

[Falundir X`Viento]

Tax - To hit lv 85 would require you playing 12-18 hours a day for years. You need to level to 80, which takes probably a year and a half, then you need to do a quest to get 'dual spec' which allows you to start over as a different class and switch between them as you wish. Once you get THAT toon to 80, you need to do a massive quest to allow you to level past 80 and utilize both class traits. The truth of it is that it's all grind...